Leeds United - Marching on together! 13/14 - The Boys are back in town!

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Neil Warnock resigns as Leeds' manager. Unknown figure in!

This could be the dawn of a new era for Leeds United, as a former professional football has taken the reigns at Leeds' after Warnock ended his disapointing spell at the club. Andrew Martindale, the former Newcastle United and Spurs striker has been hired to return one of England's biggest clubs to where they belong.

It has never been plain sailing recently for Leeds, as financial implosion nearly saw the club fold, like Rushden & Diamonds, Darlington, Chester City and Gretna have done recently. The good news, however, was that the club would survive, but they ended up in League one, lining up against the likes of Stockport County, Luton Town, and Wycombe Wanderers while they were there, whereas years earlier they were at Old Trafford, St James Park and Highbury. They since have got promoted to the Championship where they have settle in well.

Martindale was granted a 5 million pound warchest, as long as he led Leeds United to the big time once again. He has worked as a scout in Scandinavia for a few years before taking on this role, so you could expect a few of his signings to come from Norway and Sweden.

We can expect Ross McCormack to score lots of goals if Leeds' are going to get promoted.

Would you say this is a good start to my SOMS?

Where would you say I need to improve my SOMS?

Also I would appreciate it if someone could remove the white background from the Leeds United badge, as my photoshop trial ran out and paint is a bugger to use.

re: Leeds United - Marching on together! 13/14 - The Boys are back in town!

Leeds United: The squad!

Unfortunately, Leeds United do not have the greatest squad in the league, and this shows as they are predicted to finish in 8th place, which means the papers are predicting no more then a playoff challange. Lets see what the Leeds manager has to say about his squad.

quote The Leeds manager

I am confident this squad will do brilliant things in the league this season, and I am fully confident that my team can go for promotion. We have got a blend of very good experianced players, like David Norris, Ross McCormack, Luke Varney and El Hadji Diouf, and players who have the potential to turn out fantastic, like Sam Byram, Aidan White, Tom Lees and Ryan Hall. Me and the chairman have discussed the transfers and feel that although we don't need many signings for now, we could do with one or two fresh faces to join an already fantastic squad. The only real problem is the fact that some players are on extremely high wages, which could harm us financially.

Goalkeepers

quote The Leeds manager

I feel the goalkeepers are adequate for this level.

The goalkeeping area is good enough for this level, although we will need a new goalkeeper if we get promoted to the Premier League. Paddy Kenny is good enough for this level and one of our key players for the season, but wouldn't be good enough if we go up to the Premiership, because of both quality and age. Jamie Ashdown is not very good for this level and will remain as backup.

Spoiler:Paddy Kenny

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Spoiler:Paddy Kenny

Defenders

quote The Leeds manager

The defenders at the club are fantastic, top notch players, with a blend of experiance.

The defenders are the best part of the club, as there is an abundence of quality defenders. Tom Lees is a fantastic, young defender, and so is Sam Byram. We also have Aidan White who joins Lees and Byram at being fantastic young defenders. We have a few experianced faces, with Jason Pearce, Steven Warnock and Lee Peltier with lots of experience.

re: Leeds United - Marching on together! 13/14 - The Boys are back in town!

Leeds United: The squad: Midfielders and Attackers!

So I have reviewed the Goalkeepers and Defence, and them parts of the squad are very good .

Midfielders

quote The Leeds manager

The midfield is the weakest part of the team, with varying amounts of quality

The midfield is the weakest part of the squad, which seriously lacks quality in the centre of midfield, so I will have to strengthen the squad a lot there. The wingers are pretty good aswell, but truth be told I do not think there are any stand out midfielders, but the midfielder that shades it for being the best midfielder is the legendary twat El Hadji Diouf. In central midfield we have Paul Green and Michael Brown, and we can play Ryan Hall and Diouf on the wings.

Spoiler:El Hadji Diouf

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Spoiler:El Hadji Diouf

Attackers

The strikers in the team are half decent, however there are wage concerns and squad depth concerns to look out for. Ross McCormack is probably our best striker, but we also have very good Premier League experience in both former Norwich striker Steve Morison, and Luke Varney who had a good spell for Blackpool in 10/11. We also have Habib Habibou, who is absolutely useless and will have his loan spell cancelled, and Dominic Poleon who has good potential.

Spoiler:Ross McCormack

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Spoiler:Ross McCormack

The next update will be going into the August games and the transfer update, look out for that

I have a soft spot for Leeds because they were a fantastic team in the earlier PL years and it was sad to see the plight they went through due to mismanagement and I felt I wanted to take them back to where they belong.

We went into this month with high hopes for the season, hoping we could earn a spot in the playoffs so we had a chance to get into the promised land. However, judging by this month, we will be in a relegation scrap.

Firstly we will go to my transfers:

Spoiler:Transfers

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Spoiler:Transfers

I wanted a strong scandinavian influence in my signings, so I decided to raid a lot of Norways talents and signed a Swede to go with it. It was like we were the vikings, not them.

Stefan Strandberg is my favourite signing, he is a powerful and versatile player who can play at Centre back or in Central midfield. He also is only 22 so he had loads of room to grow into a quality PL player. I have high hopes for this lad.

Jonas Svensson is a quality midfielder who will partner Strandberg in pulling the strings. He is also a young player and hopefully he will help lead us to the Premier League.

Simen Wangburg is one for the future, I didn't feel the need to sign another first team midfielder, so I took the oppertunity to sign a replacement for Jason Pearce in the future. He has the coolest name out of the signings aswell, which is a plus point, obviously.

Ole Cristian Selnaes will play behind Ross McCormack in AMC. He has all the qualitys to become a fantastic player, he has a fantastic pass, he is a brilliant set peice taker, he has fantastic technique, he just lacks a bit of pace to be truthful.

Jiloan Hamad is a fantastic Swedish winger that will play lots of games for us and hopefully develop into a qualityPremiership winger.

Amos and Shroot were rushed signings that were made as backups tbh.

Next to the results:

We didn't have a great month. We needed time to adapt to my tactic, but there isn't really much excuse tbh. We started off the month at Shrewsbury in the COC, hoping we could progress to the next round. Luck wasn't on our side as we lost 5-2 and had Stefen Strandberg sent off for no reason, FO REF!

After the 5-2 loss to Shrewsbury:

quote The Leeds manager

"We were not at the races, we were poor, we were shocking at defending set peices. If that happens you are bound to lose. However, we must not regret this, we musn't think about this match. To be fair you can't come to conclusions after one match, that would be foolish. However, it could just be a one match blip. I just want to focus on our first league game at Burnley and hopefully we can get the three points to start our league season off."

However, things did not improve at all. We were shocking against Burnley and Derby County, losing 1-0 to Burnley and 2-0 to Derby but we improved against Brighton, one of the best teams in the league and we came from the South Coast with a 2-0 victory.

Overall I am not that impressed with how we have started our season, although I know it will take time for the Norweigens to settle in and to settle to my tactic.

League Table:

We are 15th which is below expectations, however, like I stated earlier, we need time to settle, and we still have 43 league games left. I think we can still pust for the playoffs.

re: Leeds United - Marching on together! 13/14 - The Boys are back in town!

Leeds United: September results & Review!

We wanted to continue the good work from the Brighton match (last one of August), so when we went to Leicester, things didn't get off to the greatest start...

I would describe it as a battle, with both teams getting quite a few yellow cards this match. However, although this is a tough game, the result and performance was not good. Selnaes put in a good shift at AMC, I was impressed with his performance and his goal, but the rest of the squad failed to match it. I will need to look into our discapline, as if we carry on getting yellow cards like this, we will end up with lots of suspensions throughout the season which would be detrimental if we are going for promotion.

The rest of the month went alright after that Leicester result, we beat Peterborough a convincing 3-1, then beat Forest 1-0 and lost to Birmingham despite dominating, and played shit against Bolton.

In the league we lie 16th, which is one place lower then where we were at the start of the month. We already have to combat a six point gap between us and the playoffs which will be tough. I think that we deserve this position in the league after our performances so far, as we really haven't shown what we can do.

We have a tough month in October, we have to play seven games, and we play some fantastic teams in that space.

My monthly aims for October is to pick up at least 12 points from our 21 games and hopefully get one away win in that run.